1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a dental floss holder and applicator operative to support a taut section of dental floss and to allow users manual manipulation of the section to clean spaces between the teeth, where decay and many gum diseases originate.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Regular application of dental floss to the spaces between teeth is an important aspect of oral hygiene. The difficulty of holding a section of dental floss between the hands and manipulating it to clean the spaces between all the teeth has motivated the invention of a variety of dental floss holders which support a short section of floss in bridging relation between a pair of spaced tines and allow the manipulation of the short section with a handle member. Previous U.S. patents employing this basic configuration include Nos. 3,672,377; 3,834,404; 3,908,677; and 4,041,962. These patents all disclose dental floss holders having posts secured to a common base of the tines for retaining the free ends of a section of dental floss bridging the tines. The tines are formed with notches at their free ends and a section of floss is extended from the post, through one of the notches, over to the other notch and back to the post. The anchoring posts have been the subject of extensive development and a number of floss holders have employed resilient rings beneath the post for the purposes of capturing the ends of a floss section and elimating the need to repeatedly wrap the end of the floss around the post.
Despite the extensive experimentation with floss holders as evidenced by the large number of issued patents on the devices, none of the holders have attained a high degree of commercial acceptance, and despite the relatively low cost of the holders, floss is still generally applied by the user stretching a section between the hands. It is accordingly an object of the present invention to provide a floss holder that simplifies the floss applying operation to make use of the holder a desirable alternative to manual application of floss.